Conservatives do face challenges in some disciplines and on some campuses, but most professors are committed to the free exchange of ideas.

Universities at their best are places where smart and intellectually curious people make arguments and are prepared to defend them against other smart and intellectually curious people with whom they disagree, free from predetermined results or stifling orthodoxies.

There is a problem, however. Faculty are becoming more and more ideologically and politically homogeneous, and this has the potential to protect commonly held ideas from scrutiny. Data from the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA found that between 1995 and 2010, an already left-leaning academy moved significantly further to the left. The window of academic discourse narrows as a result, and scholars become more susceptible to confirmation bias.

One group seeking to draw attention to the problem and propose solutions is Heterodox Academy, an ideologically-diverse group of professors who “believe that university life requires that people with diverse viewpoints and perspectives encounter each other in an environment where they feel free to speak up and challenge each other.” I joined two years ago.

Liberal colleagues have supported my work

My support for the idea of having a heterodox academy stems not from any grievance but rather from a deep appreciation for the ways I have benefited from viewpoint diversity throughout my time as a student and professor. Faculty from across the political and ideological spectrum invested time and energy in my education, and my work has been improved from conversations and interactions with colleagues who push me to think differently about important questions.

Much of the hand-wringing about viewpoint diversity comes from conservative corners and stems from a perception that universities are hostile places for conservative students and faculty, but that hasn’t been my experience.

As a conservative who has taken some intellectual risks in my career, I have been supported in my work by most of my colleagues, regardless of their political views. Some may disagree with what I have to say, at times pretty vigorously, but there has never been an attempt to silence or punish me for holding an opposing view. Rank-and-file faculty members are professional and collegial, and the vast majority I have encountered (of whatever ideological stripe) are committed to the life of the mind and the free exchange of ideas.

This is not to be Pollyannaish about the challenge conservatives face in some disciplines and on some campuses. Data assembled in the book “Passing on the Right: Conservative Professors in the Progressive University”, published by Oxford University Press in 2016, offer plenty of anecdotal evidence of conservatives in the academy who have been stigmatized by their colleagues and suffered professionally as a result. But the authors of the study, political science professors Jon Shields and Joshua Dunn, also warn that conservatives looking at the university from the outside “should be careful not to overstate the intolerance inside its walls.”

The case for intellectual humility

Part of the narrative outside the walls of the academy has been that the culture of campus activism and protest is somehow hostile to free-speech rights. Lost in that critique seems to be any recognition that peaceful campus activism and protests are themselves forms of free speech. Recently the University of Missouri, where I teach, responded to high-profile and controversial protests by doubling down on its commitment to free speech and adopting a robust statement of guiding principles modeled after a similar statement at the University of Chicago.

Still, what is needed in the academy is not simply intellectual diversity and free expression, but also intellectual humility and curiosity. One very real threat to the culture of free speech nationally is that people are increasingly unwilling and uninterested in talking to the other side. “The beliefs which we have most warrant for have no safeguard to rest on,” John Stuart Mill wrote in 1859, “but a standing invitation to the whole world to prove them unfounded.”

The original case for free speech and viewpoint diversity from people like Mill was that truth would emerge from a free and open airing of different perspectives. To paraphrase G.K. Chesterton, the point of having an open mind is to close it on something solid. Far too many people today, however, have imbibed the cultural message that there is nothing solid to close our minds on — no truth to discover and defend — and so no reason to listen to those with whom we disagree. The conclusion is that discourse is solely about power, a notion that ultimately undermines the case for free speech and the value of having diverse perspectives in the first place.

Diversity of thought is necessary but not sufficient for our universities to be places where the open airing of ideas leads to discovery and knowledge. To be about more than power, the diversity of views must be combined with a shared commitment to truth-seeking and civility. Teachers and mentors modeled that commitment for me, and it remains essential to the free exchange of ideas that characterizes university life at its best.